Long Term Wrap Up: 2014 Chevrolet Corvette Stingray

A yearlong tour de circuit with the best sports car America has ever built.

On paper, the C7 Corvette Stingray seems a lot like the C6 and the C5 before it. Pushrod V8 up front, transverse leaf springs out back, a robust manual gearbox, targa top, fat tires, and all the machismo of Josey Wales toting a bazooka. Do not let these similarities fool you. The C7 isn't anther Corvette. It's a revelation.

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Two years ago, the new Stingray beat a Ferrari F12berlinetta, Porsche Cayman S, Merecedes SLS Black Series, and nine others at our inaugural Performance Car of the Year shootout. The Vette's raw numbers impressed (3.8 seconds to 60 mph, 1.07 lateral g's), but it was the C7's newfound refinement that won out.

Still, questions lingered. Would its PCOTY luster wear of? Could it stand up to regular beatings and the daily grind? How quickly would it lap, say, Summit Point or Road Atlanta, perhaps sideways and howling at 6500 rpm with the entire regional BMW CCA giving chase?

Jamey Price & Matt Tierney

Clearly, these questions all needed answering. So we ordered a C7 Corvette last March, a seven-speed manual with sport seats. The $4000 Z51 package (close-ratio gearing, uprated suspension and brakes, dry sump oiling, aero kit, electronic limited slip-diff) was a no-brainer. For one year, we drove that white Stingray all over humanity. Before Chevrolet asked for its car back, I managed to sneak in a 2400-mile cannonball run, first from Ann Arbor to New Orleans, then a last hurrah at Carolina Motorsports Park. Swampland, lucid powerslides, and time ruminating on what the car meant to us.

It was wonderful. Eisenhower's Yellow Book, which mapped out America's interstate high- way system, was published in 1955, the same year GM started shoehorning small-block V8s into the Corvette. No two events have done more to shrink this country. The Stingray's 6.2-liter lopes effortlessly at 70 mph in seventh gear, tach needle buoyed under 1600 rpm. Tire noise and clumsy cylinder deactivation are easy to ignore once the targa top comes off. Open-top motoring is bliss. Whole states disappeared without stopping for fuel. Did I mention it got 28 mpg along the way?

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Jamey Price & Matt Tierney

With a few niceties, our Stingray cost $66,775. Contributing editor Jack Baruth called it the "finest combination of track pace and back-road aplomb any manufacturer has ever offered for that price." Thundering through the Bayou, drunk on sunshine and prickly AM radio, my mind wandered. I considered life in a studio apartment and the savings potential of making my own deodorant. Good cars get you daydreaming; great ones force you to reassess priorities. Later, I found out editor-at- large Sam Smith had already gone through the motions.

"After a track day in Kentucky, I actually called Chevy and tried to buy our long-term car. They said no," he told me. "I have never, ever done that before. Can't remember the last time I wanted to do it, either."

Understandable. The cockpit has improved by an order of magnitude, so cross-country trips no longer feel punitive. " A BMW M3 owner could love this interior," said deputy editor Joe DeMatio. "The Corvette is finally something you can valet at nice restaurants and hotels. Parking dudes cut through the clutter of automotive cachet, and the Stingray got their attention." Sixty weeks of hard use, and our cabin showed little wear. No squeaking trim pieces, no rickety seat sliders. Those plastic fantastic C5s and C6s of yore are gone. Only their best dynamic qualities remain, whetted and polished.

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Jamey Price & Matt Tierney

The Stingray is proof of a front-engine, rear-drive, eight-cylinder sports car's fundamental goodness. Balanced. Communicative. Responsive. At full tilt, the noise is somewhere between the world's tamest Yenko and angriest grizzly bear. Road test editor Robin Warner, who joined me at Carolina Motorsports Park, romped around the 2.3-mile road course, leaving a yellowed cloud of tire smoke and pollen in his wake.

"That would've been real white-knuckle three years ago," he laughed, pulling of his helmet back in the paddock. "But this car is so neutral. The little nasty streak, where the old Corvette would skate over a lump and pitch the rear, is totally mellowed." I'm sold on the Z51's electronic differential, too, after the rear stepped out a bit through Turn 3. Hammer down, dab of countersteer. Duck soup. Nothing this powerful is as tidy and gentle. It lets experts drive like idiots, and more endearingly, makes idiots looks like experts. That sort of affirmation gets under your skin. Back in the pits, I found a note Smith scribbled in the Corvette's logbook: "This thing is a missile from God."

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The car isn't without warts. Those gorgeous carbon-backed buckets would be better mounted two inches lower. While the Tremec seven-speed feels brilliant, the gate can narrow under duress. And the Stingray is happier south of the Mason-Dixon: Single-digit temps bring a reluctant starter motor and creaking body over speed bumps and potholes.

Jamey Price & Matt Tierney

In total, R&T racked up 27,171 miles, obliterated 12 tires, and managed 21 mpg. But that pile of numbers isn't the important stuff. From Michigan to Louisiana, South Carolina and back, strangers flocked to the Corvette. Legitimate fanfare. In Memphis, a seven-year-old boy flapped his arms in excitement posing for photos behind the wheel; in Ohio, a gas station attendant tried to buy the car over the loudspeaker. At a stoplight near Charlotte, an old man rolled down the window of his Suburban and encouraged me to drag-race the red 991 Carrera S next to us. "You can take 'em," he said. There may even be a small-town Mississippi sherif who'll tear up a speeding ticket in exchange for a few revs.

This, at least in part, is because the car looks striking. It's a hard-edged take on the familiar, like Trent Reznor covering Pet Sounds. The Stingray's silhouette just resonates. Baruth also posits the attainability factor, a perfect balance of pinup reverie and upper-middle-class reality. \

He's right. But I like to think it's even more basic, that people still recognize something special when they see it, and maybe there's a bit of pride because it's ours. The Corvette has always been a car America wants. Now, finally, it's the one we deserve.

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